John Gardner - October Light

“You can pray,” Ruth said. “That’s all any of us can do.”

“I will. You know that. I’ve been praying all morning.”

There was a pause. Estelle said, thinking in sudden distress of more difficulties, “Are the boys still there with you?”

“They’ve gone home, thank goodness,” Ruth said, and sighed. “Chief Young was there, at the hospital. He drove them over to the bus station for us. He’d come in with a boy had an accident in the graveyard by the old First Church. Beaten up, it seems. It was the youngest Flynn boy, or Porter, whichever they’re calling themselves now. Ethain’s son?”

“Oh good heavens! ”

“It was nothing, just scratches,” Ruth said quickly, “though they’re keeping him over for observation. It was a blessing to have Chief Young on hand, believe me. It was Providential!”

“I should think so,” Estelle said. Then: “They’ve gone home then. That’s good. What a terrible thing for everyone!”

“Lucky thing there was a bus,” Ruth said.

Estelle said, “You really should blame me, not James. It was my meddling—”

There was a silence.

“Well it’s no use blaming anyone, I suppose,” Ruth said. “I certainly can’t blame you. It’s true he was drunk, so he wasn’t himself; but you know how we are in our family about drink.”

“And you’re perfectly right,” Estelle said. “Of course you are!” Her mind began to race. Why had Ruth so suddenly changed her tune, holding back all at once, beginning to play charitable? She looked hard at the curtains, as if the pattern in the lace might have words for her to read, then looked down at her hands, small and liver-spotted, trembling. She looked up again at once. On the street beyond the curtains, John G. McCullough was driving by in his big, frog-green, old fashioned Marmon, John sitting straight and red-eared in the cold — the top was down — going to some meeting of the city fathers, probably, or to visit his bank, or to slip through a side door at Mt. Anthony High and have a word with poor silly Mr. Pelkie about music in the schools. There ought to be courses about people like John McCullough. Education should be real and personal. He was a direct descendent of Lady Godiva, and an important and valuable man in his own right — a patron of the arts, an important publisher, or had been for years, with his brother-in-law William C. Scott. Why, she wondered for the thousandth time, were the McCulloughs and Deweys not friendly? But all the while, just under the surface of her hurrying thoughts, she was working on why Ruth had changed her tune. And she was saying, meanwhile, “He’s not really a drunkard, it’s the stress. You know how it was when his son died.”

“He was certainly a drunkard then, poor boy!”

She gave a little laugh. “Poor boy indeed! But he got hold of himself.”

“Poor Ariah, I’d say.”

“Well,” Estelle said, nodding at the phone, “it wasn’t easy for either one of them.”

“No, that’s true,” Ruth said. “I don’t mean to criticize. I know how fond you always were of him.”

Estelle felt a curious sensation, then lost her thread. She waited for Ruth to speak.

Ruth said darkly, “I suppose you’ve heard about Virginia?”

“Virginia?” Estelle said. At Ruth’s tone of voice she was suddenly wide awake again, tingling with alarm.

“His daughter Virginia Hicks is here in the hospital,” Ruth said.

“No!”

“Yes indeedy! Husband Lewis brought her in.” She said ominously: “Nobody’s saying what happened to her.”

“Good heavens!” Estelle said.

“Cut on the head, apparently,” Ruth said. “I understand she’s been unconscious for hours.”

“No,” Estelle whispered.

“Well, we’ll just have to see what we see,” Ruth said. “It’s a funny world.”

Estelle nodded, then shook her head, saying nothing. The pattern on the curtains was sharper all at once. If there were anything there to read, she could have read it. It’s my fault, she thought, all my fault. She’d known she shouldn’t interfere. But no fool like an old fool. She said: “Is that all they’re saying? A cut on the head?”

“You know how they are in hospitals,” Ruth said.

Estelle’s head was jittering more troublesomely now with the stupid palsy. “How tired you must be,” she said. “Ruth, have you slept?”

There were noises for a moment in the background, and in a changed voice Ruth said, “Oh! Here’s Dr. Phelps and Dr. Sung. I’ll have to hang up now. It’s so good of you to call.”

“Of course. Don’t mention it! Do keep me posted, and if there’s anything I can do—”

“I’ll keep in touch, dear. It’s so good to talk to you!”

“Heavens, not at all!”

“Good-bye,” Ruth said. “Thank you.” The phone clicked.

“Good-bye,” Estelle said to the humming line. She hung up the receiver and slowly brought her fingertips to her mouth.

5

(Terence on Pure and Subservient Art)

Terence Parks sat in the corner chair in the green living room of his parents’ house, three houses down from his aunt Estelle’s, listening to the Tippett Sonata for Four Horns and trying to think, or rather struggling with a chaos of old and new feelings, in a sense old and new ideas. Evening was coming on, filling him with restlessness and a queer sense of dread, a sensation difficult to get ahold of, put a name to, worse than anything he could remember since childhood, though in a general way, of course, he understood it. James Page, waving his shotgun last night, had changed everything.

Nothing in his father’s large record collection was more familiar to Terence than the Tippett Sonata: happy music, he’d always thought; but tonight it had dark implications he’d never before noticed. Not that the music wasn’t happy even now — in general, at least — and not that he wasn’t himself feeling something like happiness, or at any rate feeling stirred up, uplifted by excitement — though at the same time fearful. Even talking with Margie last night he hadn’t worked out the exact way to say it, but he was onto something. He had made, or perhaps was on the verge of making, a discovery. It had to do, it seemed to him now, with walking in the rain with Margie Phelps, and with the mad old man’s shotgun, and with music.

When her grandfather had had to go to the hospital with the Thomases — Ed Thomas groaning, his wife sick with fear, and even old Dr. Phelps alarmed — Terence had suggested that he and his aunt Estelle drive Margie home. The grown-ups had accepted his suggestion at once, like panic-fuddled children who’d been waiting for advice, and though he’d been surprised at their listening to him — treating him, abruptly and without thinking, as an equal — he’d known instantly that their listening was right. It was not so much a thought as suddenly ripe knowledge, like the knowledge that one day comes to a young bull when by chance he knocks down the farmer.

That was only the beginning. As soon as the Thomases were out of the yard, his aunt had changed her mind about starting down the mountain. They must wait, she insisted, at least until the police came. She sat with her head lowered, lips clamped tight, watching the house. She was as pale and shaky as Ed Thomas had been — for which Terence couldn’t blame her, he was shaky himself — yet there was something more to her distress than ordinary fear, he sensed. Whimpering, touching her face with both hands, now praying that poor James might be brought to his senses, now praying for Sally’s life, she showed a side Terence had never before seen in her and couldn’t understand, found distasteful. Her emotion seemed to him extreme, theatrical in fact, and, what was worse, unbalanced: there was no one to impress with her pious concern except himself and Margie — and Aunt Estelle seemed hardly to be conscious of their existence. Pulling at her face, whimpering and whispering, she struck him as a little like a madwoman: nothing in the real world (nothing he could think of) could provoke all this, though of course it was possible that the fault was his, that he too should feel grief and concern but was cruelly insensitive. It did not occur to him, since he knew them only as cranky and old, even at their best moments “difficult,” that his great-aunt Estelle in fact loved James Page and Sally Abbott, dearly loved both of them, remembering them young — remembering how James had been wide of chest, cocksure and quick-witted, and how Sally had been a remarkable beauty and, sometimes in spite of her instincts, a faithful friend.